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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28960749">Well of Sorrow</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/TBs_LMC/pseuds/TheMoments'>TheMoments (TBs_LMC)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Dragon Age: Origins</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Antiva (Dragon Age), Cailan Death, Canon deaths, Dragon Age: Origins - Return to Ostagar DLC, Duncan Death, F/M, Female Mahariel Death, Gen, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Suicide, King Alistair (Dragon Age), M/M, Men Crying, Ostagar (Dragon Age), Pain, Post-Canon, Post-Dragon Age: Origins - Return to Ostagar DLC, Strangers, Suicide Attempt, Tears</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 06:27:33</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,351</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28960749</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/TBs_LMC/pseuds/TheMoments</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Former Antivan Crow Zevran Arainai has lost the love of his life, the Hero of Ferelden, to the Fifth Blight’s archdemon. Can a soul searching for reasons to go on find some kind of purpose in another who knows loss only too well? Or is the well of sorrow within far too deep?</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Rory Gilmore &amp; Male Cousland, Zevran Arainai &amp; Male Cousland, Zevran Arainai/Female Mahariel, Zevran Arainai/Female Warden</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Well of Sorrow</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Please note that there are references to (canon) Zevran attempting suicide-by-warden as well as implications of suicide within this story itself. If this is something you are uncomfortable with, please do not read the story.</p><p>My assumption in writing this post-canon occurrence is that if any character other than a Cousland was recruited as a Grey Warden, things would still have gone down at Cousland Castle as they did when I played as a Cousland warden (minus Duncan’s presence and recruitment).</p><p>The poem which appears at the beginning of this story is an original poem that I wrote specifically for this fic.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p></p><blockquote>
  <p>
    <em>Deep within the mire of my soul</em>
  </p>
  <p>
    <em>Too many pieces lack to make it whole</em>
  </p>
  <p>
    <em>And yet somewhere they say it still exists</em>
  </p>
  <p>
    <em>That feeling of untempered holy bliss</em>
  </p>
  <p>
    <em>For if the bruised can heal enough to mend</em>
  </p>
  <p>
    <em>You’ll find a new ‘whole’ meaning in the end</em>
  </p>
</blockquote><p> </p><p>
  <span class="u"> <strong>WELL OF SORROW</strong> </span>
</p><hr/><p>He surveyed the vast field of bodies. Some were fresher than others and he knew these were the ones his beloved, and Alistair, and Wynne, and the dog, had slain together upon their return here eight months ago.</p><p>It appeared that even the darkspawn were gone from this place, eradicated by the two surviving wardens to return no more.</p><p>There was the bridge, where she’d told him the ‘spawn had strung up Cailan’s dead body.</p><p>There was the magi encampment, where she’d first met Wynne.</p><p>There was the royal quarter, where she’d found the royal chest that contained proof of Loghain’s treachery where Orlais was concerned.</p><p>There was the central bonfire where she’d stood talking with Duncan, Jory, Daveth and Alistair. The gate to Korcari Wilds, where they’d braved darkspawn to get blood and treaties.</p><p>The Tower of Ishal where she and Alistair had been plucked from by Morrigan’s mother.</p><p>As he walked the grounds, Zevran Arainai, former Antivan Crow, trained as an assassin since he was but seven years of age, boastful conqueror of men and women alike, could not muster any emotion beyond that which currently streamed from his heart like rivers of blood falling unbidden.</p><p>Every step he took followed her story, both of the night she’d arrived with Duncan from having just left her Dalish clan, and of the return trip she’d made with the others to retrieve the needed documents from Cailan’s locked chest.</p><p>Everywhere he looked he could see her standing there chatting with someone or performing whatever actions she’d told him she’d performed. When at last she came upon the ogre, she could clearly see the dagger imprints left from when Duncan had slain it – which was how she’d retrieved both his dagger and his longsword for Alistair – and Zevran now saw the unique shape of Starfang left behind in rotting flesh where she had killed the beast a second time, after a darkspawn mage had brought it back to life right before their eyes.</p><p>Zevran touched the ogre’s carcass, only because she had once touched it.</p><p>He found bits and pieces of evidence here and there proving her presence. A small footprint he recognized as the sole of her favorite boots. The top cork of a potion she’d pulled out with her teeth and spat to the ground. The vial lying right next to it. Of course, it could’ve been Alistair or Wynne or even the dog that had used the vial, but he chose to believe it was her, clasped the empty vial in his hand and stuffed it into an outer pocket.</p><p>A great, heaving sigh filled with as-yet unleashed sobs made his chest rise and fall in halted motion as he stood in the middle of the bridge looking out over the vast expanse of beauty to both sides. She had seen this during battle when smoke and fire filled the air and explosions rocked it beneath her feet. She had seen it much as it was now, in eerie silent homage to those whose lives had ended upon it.</p><p>There had only been one other time in his life that he had wanted to live no longer, and suicide by Grey Warden had failed so miserably that it had left his heart in even worse tatters than Rinna had. Now, without realizing he was doing so, Zevran stepped closer and closer to one of the places where battle had blasted away part of the bridge, leaving a gaping crescent-shaped maw where a solid walkway should have been. His eyes were focused on the tower, where he well imagined the two wardens finally making it through massive amounts of darkspawn, finally being able to light the beacon…only to be left to die by Loghain’s treachery.</p><p>He fell to his knees as he imagined the look on King Cailan’s face when he realized what had happened. How it must have pained Duncan when he saw the fire lit, yet no one coming to help. Had he actually watched his king die? In that moment, did he think his Grey Warden charges were also dead? Did he regret having recruited them? Was he mourning them? Hoping to save them still when he was cut down by whatever force had removed him so completely from existence that no trace of his corpse had ever been found?</p><p>How terrified she must have been. She, whose worst enemy until then had been trespassing <em>shemlen</em> and werewolves that she easily dispatched with her unrivalled archery prowess. Never had he seen a faster draw, a steadier aim, a better target master. She could dip arrows in poison, mount them, draw them and have them killing their intended victims almost before he could leap and slice at someone’s heel or cut a neat line across their throat.</p><p>He choked on anguish, bending forward, thinking just how easy it would be to allow the force of his weight to plummet him over the edge. Three months it had been and still he could not function anywhere close to where he had before meeting <em>her</em>.</p><p>“Hey, hey, whoa,” came a soft voice. A magical voice. Deep of timbre, gentle of cadence. Cautious hands on his shoulders, righting him. “Careful, there. You nearly took a deadly tumble.”</p><p>Zevran looked up, almost directly into the light, save for the head that blocked the mass of the sun from his eyes. For just a moment his heart thudded wildly in his chest as he wondered if he had actually died. For surely the ethereal creature before him now had to be one who sat at the hand of the Maker.</p><p>“Are you all right?”</p><p>That voice was nothing if not from the Golden City itself, and so Zevran allowed himself to be helped to his feet and pulled further back from the broken edge of the bridge. “I…I’m…thank you,” he stammered uncharacteristically, still certain he must actually have taken the leap off the bridge and was currently dead.</p><p>“I’m sorry I interrupted whatever you were doing. I became concerned when you got…close…” The voice trailed off, and Zevran could somehow feel that this man knew what he had been about to do.</p><p>It shamed him for reasons he could not name. “Thank you,” he whispered, then moved slightly so he could see his savior a bit better without going blind in the light. “You know, that is the second time that my life has been spared when it should by rights have ended.”</p><p>“Oh? You make a habit of this sort of luck, then?”</p><p>Zevran’s face crumpled. His legs gave out beneath him as her words came back and hit him with all the force of a Sten-wielded maul. <em>“You’re very lucky indeed.”</em> And he had gone on in all his bluster to account for his string of luck that included her, and her sparing his life, and accepting him as a companion in her quest.</p><p>What the man here must think of him. Then again, if he was dead, did it matter?</p><p>A bit of scuffling sounded next to him and then the warmth of a close body. Zev looked to his left to find that not only had the ethereal man sat down, but he could now see his features well enough to note that he looked like a very real man indeed…yet no less ethereal than when the sun had been behind his head.</p><p>He was human. Broad-shouldered and muscular. Square-jawed in a way that screamed Ferelden and yet bore a high, noble brow and the straight-edged nose of the noble-born. His complexion was fair but sun-kissed as though he spent most of his time outdoors rather than in, and his shoulder-length wavy hair was so blond it was very nearly white, yet streaked with strands that shone bright red in the sunlight. A smattering of pale freckles across his upper cheeks and the bridge of his nose gave him a boyish look, but it was his eyes that seemed to bore holes straight through Zev’s skull and clean out the other side as though he were pushing him to somewhere Zevran wasn’t quite sure he wanted to go.</p><p>Those eyes were the color of water off the end of his favorite pier in Antiva City, where he had spent many a day scavenging bits of fish that the birds and fishermen’s knives let drop, to fill his belly as the Crows refused to. Eyes of turquoise and teal, deeper flecks like the angry ocean of a storm, even a smattering of the green that sometimes licked the sands of beaches near Rialto that he had loved to walk. Soft white sand sliding upward through his toes. Tiny crabs popping out from its depths to scuttle along until they quickly dug their way back in before he stepped on them.</p><p><em>Yes</em>. This man’s eyes brought a warmth, the good parts of Antiva that he held closely, cherished deep within his soul. Things he had forgotten in his new life, new quest, new sorrow. He felt then, suddenly, warmed from within as his face turned to the sun where, in spite of the chill in Ostagar’s air, he could imagine it to be the sun of his youth. The Crows had broken him completely, spit him out and rebuilt him. <em>She</em> had thrown all that to the side and re<em>made</em> him.</p><p>Now, he didn’t know who he was. Except for this. Except for ocean eyes.</p><p>Zevran wasn’t aware of how long they sat there for, exactly, but at some point the warm baritone that seemed to cradle him on the waves of Rialto Bay…power hiding underneath, understood but not used unless necessary…brought him back from his dreams. Reality crashed down around him like a house made of glass, millions of shards cutting him anew as he bled from the inside, out.</p><p>“I’m sorry, but it’s nearing dusk and I fear leaving you here to freeze would not sit well with me. I have scouted a suitable camp some half-mile hence. Will you share my fire? Keep a lonely traveler company for an eve?”</p><p>Zevran’s return to reality left him little in the way of caring what happened next so he nodded dumbly, ignoring the warmth of the thanks he received in favor of nursing his heartache. In silence he followed at the man’s side. Zev didn’t even know his name, nor did the stranger know his.</p><p>Perhaps it was better this way.</p><hr/><p>Zevran had taken nothing with him from the wardens’ camp and thus had no bedroll and only one blanket he’d brought with him from Antiva. A blanket found, two hours later, to be sorely lacking in keeping him warm at the heights of Ostagar.</p><p>“Would you prefer my blanket out here or my body heat in there as you sleep?” came the startling question from the stranger.</p><p>“But then how would you keep warm if I took your blanket?” Zev blurted out.</p><p>“I have a tent and…I presume you might not wish to squeeze in there with me.” When no protest was forthcoming, the human prodded, “Or am I mistaken on that count?”</p><p>“I am happy to sleep wherever you wish me to,” Zevran replied.</p><p>“Well, then it will probably be more comfortable for us here in the tent. Blocks the wind, some nice, warm furs and apparently I cook like a furnace at all times so it’ll be like sleeping in the fire.” The man let out a hearty chuckle that Zev couldn’t help but smile at.</p><p>“Don’t you mean next to the fire? I’m afraid sleeping <em>in</em> the fire would get me nothing but burned.”</p><p>“So I hear,” the man said quietly as he finished driving the tent stakes sturdily into the ground.  Once accomplished, he rose to his full height – and only then did Zev realize he reached only the bottom of the man’s collarbone with his back straight – and smiled at the elf. “I promise you I’m a perfect gentleman until I’m not, but that requires mutual agreement. And also that I know the name of whoever it is that wants to see me <em>not</em> be a gentleman, of course.”</p><p>“How thoughtless of me, and after such a gallant rescue, too.” Zevran smiled slightly, pouring as much charm into it as he could. He could feel his insides already beginning to revert back to how he’d been upon first meeting <em>her</em>. Brazen, cocky. All oozing charm and bedroll eyes. But above all, fake.</p><p>Nothing about Zevran had been real except how quickly and easily and <em>well</em> he had learned to squash every negativity into splatted puddles of nothingness inside his mind, thus providing himself hour-by-hour false positives to show the world. Lock away the little boy sitting in a tiny, dark closet hugging his knees to his chest and bawling in pain and loneliness. Refuse to admit the last year happened, where his insides had come outside, where his heart had taken up residence on his sleeve, where his guard had not just been let down, but thoroughly trounced.</p><p>He looked up to the sky where stars were just beginning to come into view as the last of daylight fled. Another day. Another night. Back to the life he’d had before. Back to being a Zevran-shaped elf that surrounded a big, black, churning hole of nothing.</p><p>“My name is Aedan,” the man said, startling Zevran from his musings. “Aedan Cousland.”</p><p>Zev felt flame besiege his cheeks, for he’d responded to the man but gotten lost enough in his mind that he’d neglected to actually tell him his name. And here he was trying to spare Zev from embarrassment by forging ahead without mentioning Zevran’s obvious distraction.</p><p>“I’m sorry. My manners have grown truly deplorable,” he replied, reaching out to take the human’s offered hand. “Zevran Arainai, at your service. Wait, did you say Cousland?”</p><p>“Did you say Arainai?”</p><p>They grinned at each other. Zevran was well aware that his wall made of sticks and bits of cloth in the aftermath of <em>her</em> death had just fallen to its death without so much as a puff of air. He was going to have to do better than that.</p><p>“The ward…<em>she</em>…a friend of mine told me of a man named Cousland who had gone scouting in the Korcari Wilds with his men,” Zev said quickly, doing his best to ignore a war being fought internally. <em>She</em> had gotten him to the point where even without her by his side, he <em>cared</em>. Wanted to help. Even if it meant dredging up memories of <em>her</em> that he simply wished to stay hidden.</p><p>What was becoming of him?</p><p>“This man…Fergus, right? Fergus Cousland?” Aedan asked excitedly.</p><p>“Brother?”</p><p>He nodded. “Elder. I’ve been looking for him since the Blight ended. And you…you were a companion of the Grey Wardens who stopped it, yes? Of our good King Alistair now on the throne, and of –”</p><p>“Yes,” Zevran nodded once, curtly, cursing himself for his voice breaking on that simple word. “I was…we were…yes.” He cleared his throat and something like a small whining sound escaped as well.</p><p>“I…oh, I…<em>oh</em>.” The man…Aedan…looked at him with such sadness that Zevran’s heart almost broke all over again so much so that he had to look away. “I see. That’s…why you were here at Ostagar today.”</p><p>He didn’t trust his voice. Wasn’t certain it wouldn’t break in two the moment he said one more word. So Zev merely nodded.</p><p>“I’m sorry. I…get it…I understand what…I’m sorry if I stopped you from doing…” Aedan shrugged one shoulder, looking as helpless and lost as Zevran felt.</p><p>The elf felt like he had to do something. <em>Say</em> something. <em>She</em> would never have left things like this. She would have tried to smooth it over, soothe them both. Provide some kind of salve for the situation.</p><p>“I don’t know what I was doing. Here, or out on the bridge where you found me,” he admitted. “I have wandered aimlessly for three months since…since the Hero of Ferelden died saving us all.” His voice trailed off. He felt his throat close. And for the first time since it had happened, real tears filled his eyes, unlike before where he always just went numb and cold thinking of her. “How unseemly of me,” he whispered, ducking his chin to his chest.</p><p>“Not at all, I…do you know I haven’t cried a single tear yet since Arl Howe and his men murdered my entire household?” The words came out in a rushed single breath as if Aedan was purposely trying to propel them from his lips before he could stop himself.</p><p>Shock filled Zev as, his own woes forgotten for the moment, he looked back up and stared at Aedan’s face. Pink tinged his cheekbones and his eyes darted around, choosing to look anywhere but directly at the elf.</p><p>“Your entire household? What <em>happened</em>?”</p><p>“My father, Teryn Bryce Cousland of Highever, sent my elder brother, Fergus, ahead of him to Ostagar with his small army of men.” Aedan thumped down onto the ground, light armor clanking softly at the movement. “They were supposed to have marched with Father, Howe and their armies, but Howe claimed his men had gotten behind schedule and thus Father sent Fergus on ahead so King Cailan would know what was keeping them.”</p><p>Everyone had a story from the time of Ostagar, Zevran thought. His weeks before the battle which had ended everything, had been spent in bliss planning a future with his love, only to discover the night before battle that either she, Riordan or Alistair would be dying the next day. Assuming the archdemon fell. He wanted to physically force her not to go, but she was sworn to her duty before all else, as much as she loved him, and so as he had allowed Rinna to go to her death while loving him, so too had he allowed <em>her</em> to find her death as he looked on and allowed it to happen.</p><p>“That night while we slept,” Aedan continued, pulling Zev back from the startling realization that deep down he was comparing <em>her</em> to Rinna and assigning himself the blame for both, “my Mabari woke me with frenzied barking. The castle had been invaded. I no sooner opened a door than one of our servants ran to it begging my help, only to be felled by the arrow of one of Howe’s soldiers.”</p><p>Zevran’s brow furrowed. “Do you mean to say that the delay of his soldiers had been a ruse?” he asked. “That Howe intended to lay siege to your castle all along?”</p><p>“As far as my mother and I could make out, yes. Though the soldiers had not yet been able to force their way into her room or mine, they had already killed Fergus’ wife and son, my sister-in-law Orina and nephew, Oren.”</p><p>“Does he know?”</p><p>“I don’t know how he could. He never returned home and these many months I have been searching, no one has seen or heard from him. If he lives, I fear he lives unaware of their demise.” Aedan shook his head, picked a blade of grass from the ground and began peeling it between thick, strong thumbs and forefingers. “Perhaps it is a fool’s errand I run, hoping that by wandering the places he has been I will find him.”</p><p>Zevran softly snorted. “It doesn’t sound much different from what I have been doing, truth be told.”</p><p>Aedan looked at him for long moments. “No, I suppose it’s not.” He sighed, shrugged his left shoulder. “My mother and I found my father at the secret servant’s entrance but he was so severely wounded that he feared standing would undo what little held him together still.”</p><p>“They had attacked him already.”</p><p>“Yes,” Aedan nodded. “Rory – he was one of Father’s knights. I knew him as a brother, we were raised so closely together. Rory was the one who managed to get Father from the front door where he had been attacked to the larder, for Father knew if we still lived, that was where we’d meet him to make our escape.”</p><p>“I’m sorry, but I’m confused. You stated everyone was killed. What of this Rory, then? And your mother, who still lived?”</p><p>“Howe’s men poured into the castle like roaches,” Aedan spat, anger flashing in his eyes.</p><p>Zevran was reminded of roiling swells of sea under a blackened sky with lightning flashing and merciless winds whipping water into a frenzied instrument of death. Such now had Aedan’s tranquil oceans become.</p><p>“Rory simply didn’t have enough men to hold them off and thus retreated to where he hoped all surviving Couslands were. And he was right. The three of us had just come together, and we were learning of the gravity of Father’s injuries when Rory and a lesser knight burst through the larder door and warned us Howe’s men would soon be there. He insisted my mother and I leave; that he would defend my father to the death.”</p><p>Aedan looked away and after a few minutes, when he spoke again, Zevran could hear the tears in his voice, regardless of whether his unseen eyes were actually letting any loose. “We had minutes to spare. Mother refused to leave Father. She…she loved him so much…”</p><p>Aedan faltered and without thinking, Zevran moved to crouch by his side, placing a hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry. You needn’t continue if it’s too painful.”</p><p>“No, I…” he looked up, eyes brightly teal and turquoise again, shining with unshed tears. He allowed a small smile to grace his face and Zevran’s mouth went dry, for never before had he witnessed such beauty in the face of a man as he was seeing in this private, vulnerable moment. “I’ve never spoken of it to anyone. I’d…” He looked away again, head hanging as his forearm came to rest on his bent knee.</p><p>Zevran’s hand remained where it was.</p><p>“My father ordered Rory to get me out of the castle no matter the cost. We…we had a small rendezvous point we’d always held in strictest secrecy. It was known only to those my father trusted most within his own household. Rory managed to get me through the secret passage and out to a small rise beyond the castle walls, but when we lifted the trapdoor at the end of it, we were ambushed.”</p><p>Aedan’s lower lip trembled as he fought to compose himself. Zevran squeezed his shoulder. The human raised a hand and placed it atop Zevran’s, as if he needed desperately the grounding of another’s touch. A feeling Zev knew all too well, as he stared at where Aedan’s large hand was completely hiding his own.</p><p>“Ser Jonas, the other knight who’d been with us, lost his life protecting Rory, and Rory? He fought like ten men. Maybe even twenty,” he half-laughed, half-sobbed. “He’d been studying berserkers, and if that sonofabitch wasn’t a frightening sight to behold.” Another half-laugh. “He took out two dozen men, me struggling at range to keep my arrows flying. But I was rapidly running out and there were at least twenty more men beyond the ones Rory got, coming over the rise toward us. There was no way, just the two of us against some fifty or more incentivized soldiers.”</p><p>This time when Aedan’s face turned upward toward his, the tears had loosed their holds on his eyes and unabashedly made their tracks down his cheeks. “Rory screamed at the top of his lungs for me to run. Run and not look back no matter what I heard.” He shook his head. “I’m not a coward, Zev, I…I could hear my dog and Rory tearing into these guys, the barking and the roaring and the screaming and yelling, and…he saw I was still there and yelled <em>again</em> and…in that moment, I saw something in his eyes that had always been there. Something I’d missed or glossed over, or…”</p><p>Aedan’s chest heaved and heaved as he tried catching his breath. Zevran was frozen in place, unable to move, certain he could feel a gut-wrenching parallel about to happen, wishing desperately both that it would and that it wouldn’t, for he wasn’t altogether sure he’d survive it if it did.</p><p>“Rory and I had known each other practically our entire lives,” Aedan whispered. “Spent every free moment together. Hugged, played, fought, loved...but I had no idea until that moment, when the light from one of the soldiers’ torches lit Rory’s face as his eyes met mine across those many feet apart, what that love was. That I’d missed the best thing I ever could have known and in that same moment, knew was gone forever.”</p><p>“He loved you,” Zev breathed and then his breath hitched into a sob because he knew what was coming next.</p><p>Aedan nodded. “He loved me enough to give his life for me.”</p><p>
  <em>Her words from the night before rang in his head like a smith’s hammer. “I love you, too, Zev, you know I do. But I also love the citizens of Ferelden.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Enough to give your life for them?”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>She nodded. “If it comes to that, then yes. How can I selfishly withhold the lives of millions for the love of one?”</em>
</p><p>“He fought to the last,” Aedan said, voice breaking and yet with pride interlacing his sorrow. “The last thing I saw him do, as the soldiers piled on him, buried him beneath their axes and daggers, their swords and mauls, was say something to me.”</p><p><em>She was down next to the archdemon’s massive head, the back of her armor torn apart, blood-soaked. Her cheek resting against the stone floor of the tower. She found Zevran’s eyes through all the confusion and terror as he raced toward her from the next platform over. He knew, somehow </em>knew<em> that she wouldn’t be breathing by the time he reached her side. </em></p><p>“He mouthed the words,” Aedan finished, squeezing Zevran’s hands. “I love you, to me, was his last desperate act before he was gone.”</p><p>
  <em>As the light faded from her eyes, her lips moved one last time, mouthing “I love you” before finally going still.</em>
</p><p>“I couldn’t let his sacrifice be for nothing,” Aedan said, removing his hand from atop Zevran’s and swiping the back of it against both cheeks. “So I turned and ran, and in the darkness they lost track of me because I knew where I was going and they didn’t. Someone had betrayed our secret exit, but nobody had betrayed the rendezvous point. I waited for five days before admitting to myself that no one would be joining me there.”</p><p>
  <em>“How can you simply go on like nothing’s happened, Alistair?” Zevran asked angrily as the now-King of Ferelden shot him a glare that might’ve melted an entire shield at any other time. “Get married, coronated, as if she never was!”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I honored her the only way I could!” Alistair yelled back. “Do you think she’d want us sitting here and moping with Ferelden so desperate for help in the aftermath of what she lost everything for? I have to do this, don’t you see? I can’t let her sacrifice be for nothing!”</em>
</p><p>Aedan cleared his throat. Wiped at his nose with some random cloth he’d pulled out from somewhere in his armor. “At first I simply despaired. Everyone was gone. My parents. Our entire staff. The knights. Soldiers. Stablehands. All our horses, slaughtered. Our Mabari, all livestock, the same. And Rory.” He took a deep breath. “Eventually I realized that there was still hope, slim though it may be, that Fergus was still alive. And with that hope, the realization that if he was, he’d lost his wife, child and parents all in one terrible night.”</p><p>
  <em>Zevran had hauled off and punched the king’s jaw so hard that his personal guard had come running to put the elf in shackles. But Alistair had waved them away. “Leave,” he’d said to Zevran. “And don’t show your face here again until you can stop being selfish long enough to understand that you’re not the only one hurting.”</em>
</p><p>“I knew that if I did find him, the news would hit him so hard. He loved Orina so much, and little Oren – he was only seven – he was Fergus’ whole world. So I had to try to figure out how to put my own pain aside long enough that if I did stumble on my older brother, I wouldn’t be selfish enough to think I was the only one of us hurting.”</p><p>Zev huffed out a defeated breath and yet in those moments, felt a sort of empowerment well up inside him. As if, within the space of hearing Aedan’s story echo his so completely, a valve had been opened and all the hurt had simply begun pouring out of Zevran’s soul like the new-fangled running tap water nozzles in the Royal Palace.</p><p>“I’m sorry about your Rory.”</p><p>“And I’m sorry about your Hero of Ferelden.”</p><p>A thought occurred to Zevran as so many of them flew unbidden through his mind. “You recognized my name, before, when I told it to you. You even knew my last name. How?”</p><p>“Everyone knows the love story. You are the subject of many a bard’s tale and songstress’s voice, thanks to the songs of Leliana.”</p><p>Zevran looked incredulously at him.</p><p>“Every tavern in which I have stopped since the Blight ended has sung the praises of the Hero herself, of her Dalish origins and the mages and qunari and all of your traveling companions. Of good King Alistair, and often enough, of the elf whose sacrifice of the heart allowed his Hero to sacrifice herself for us all.”</p><p>“The songs say these things? In public?”</p><p>“They do,” Aedan confirmed. “You are well-known as the most caring assassin in Ferelden,” he continued with a grin.</p><p>Zevran snorted softly. Him? Caring? Sacrificing for others? <em>Him</em>?</p><p>And then, like a crystal clear bell in the air, he heard her voice surround him.</p><p>
  <em>“These things have been inside of you all along, Zevran. I simply made you feel safe enough to allow the world to know you as you really are. Don’t hide your beautiful self again, especially if you find another to help you feel just as safe as I did.”</em>
</p><p><em>I love you</em>, he thought, and then wondered if he’d gone mad.</p><p>Yes, he <em>had</em> loved her. And let her go to the duty that could not be forsworn. As he watched Aedan rise to his feet and finish securing the tent, a chill wind whipped up, making his teeth chatter. The human made to enter the tent but stopped, looking back at Zevran with a raised eyebrow. With a small nod, Zev got to his feet and followed Aedan inside.</p><p>Tonight, he would sleep for the first time since she’d gone to be with her gods, with the warmth of another living, breathing, loving being next to him. And tomorrow, Zevran vowed, he would offer to help undertake this impossible quest of Aedan Cousland’s, to find his brother somewhere in the vastness of the Korcari Wilds.</p><p>And then maybe after that he’d keep adventuring. Keep looking for people who needed help. After all, Ferelden was one massive blistering, festering sore that very much needed tending to, and thanks to those he’d traveled with, become close to, learned from and loved, Zevran Arainai had come to understand a thing or two about taking care of other peoples’ needs before your own.</p><p>Just as <em>she</em>…just as <em>Gheya</em> <em>Mahariel</em>…had done.</p><p>How could he aspire to any less?</p>
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